


Adopting Spysassins

by TeazNTisanes



Series: L-O-V-E [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adopting Spysassins, Darcy Lewis Feels, Gen, Spysassin Twins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-06-18 21:55:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15495489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeazNTisanes/pseuds/TeazNTisanes
Summary: Darcy adopts spysassins. Most people find them terrifying. Darcy finds their murderous ways adorable. Five times Darcy respects the importance of consent, and one time consent is ignored.





	1. Don't Touch the Ballerina

**Author's Note:**

> This story might get a bit darker than the other things posted in this series. Trigger warnings will be given at the beginning of each chapter.

          This is not a story about how Darcy ended up adopting spysassin twins and later a foundling third. That is a long and complicated story and Darcy can't be sure that she adopted them and not the other way around. She thinks they are adorable and they clearly return the sentiment in their own hideously loyal and murderous way. This is hell on her dating life, but Darcy has always kind of floated on the line between demi- and asexual anyway, the spysassins are better at understanding the nuances of consent than any civilian she has ever met. 

 

          This story is more a glimpse of the links in the chains that anchor Darcy's little murderous family together. They aren't made up of blood, vengeance, and strife like most would assume; but more often the moments that happen before or between those times of darkness. Darcy isn't as serious or murderous on the outside as most of the Avengers, but she is excellent at taking care of other people. It doesn't matter to her whether they or anyone else think they deserve it. In fact, she finds that those who most think deserve her care the least tend to appreciate and cherish her the most. The rest of the world can go hang as far as she is concerned. 

 

          She gets a little cranky when people aren't kind to the people she cares about. Natasha had had a tough mission. Some of the less ambiguously hero-like Avengers had been giving Natasha a hard time. Brash, Gryffindor-like heroics didn't work for all the villains. Sometimes "wet" work (where had that term come from?) was the only answer. Natasha was choosy, she had her lines, and if those lines were different from or further than some of the others' on the team; why should that be held against her. She had coldly faced down Steve's criticisms in her debriefing, but Darcy could tell how much it was bothering her redheaded spysassin. Not because Natasha showed it outwardly at all, but because of where she had gone after the debriefing.

 

          Clint had been out for pizza when Nat had gotten back or he would be standing beside Darcy. As it was, he was on his way back as quick as could be, and Darcy was doing her best to be helpful until then. Natasha had not even showered, but changed into a leotard and pointe shoes. She had ash, blood, and some thicker substances smeared along her forearms, face, and chest. Her hair burnt like a fae bog light. The dissonance of the gore and her delicate, graceful movements at the barre would have been chilling from the outside. From Nat's inner circle, Darcy was just worried. She had been told explicitly by both spysassins that if Natasha was dancing like this, she should never, ever touch her. Natasha was worried about Darcy's fragility, Darcy was worried about proving that Natasha deserved for her boundaries to be respected. 

 

          So, Darcy didn't touch her, she sat on the floor about ten feet from the barre with a plate of Russian tea cookies. She had been baking fresh batches every few days in case of the other woman's return. She chattered at Nat about geeky things like Doctor Who and Sherlock. She updated her on what she'd been doing for the last few weeks. She told her Clint would be excited to see her and tattled about the hurt pigeon that was living in his bathroom while it rehabilitated. 

 

          After 20 minutes or so, Clint poked his head into the studio and muttered some Russian to Natasha. She stopped like a dancer in a music box, holding an impossible position mid spin and conversing with Clint in Russian not even breathing hard. This was the check in. Once they had gone through their routine, Natasha slumped a bit and wandered over to Darcy. Darcy received a small but genuine smile as Natasha nabbed a cookie and headed to the shower room. Darcy and Clint split a few more cookies while they sat on the benches outside the showers and kept Nat company. When Nat emerged wrapped in a fluffy towels, Clint rubbed her feet with firm, sure strokes while Darcy gently toweled her hair dry and brushed it out. Neither mentioned the tears that ran down Natasha's cheeks. 

 

          Clint had brought a bag with him, and when Natasha was done being pampered he opened it up. Natasha dressed in one of Clint's ironic t-shirts and a pair of Darcy's worn sweatpants. Then they all trooped down to the common room in Clint's suite. The pizza was cold but waiting on the coffee table and How I Met Your Mother was queued on Netflix. They piled onto the couch with Nat in the middle and tugged a blanket over all three laps. Natasha remained upright long enough for all of them to eat and then curled up like a cat in a tightly wound ball on the middle cushion with her head on Darcy's thigh and her toes tucked under Clint's butt. 

 

          The more Natasha relaxed, the more she literally unwound and the deeper she fell into sleep. By the time she was snoring softly, her head was on Darcy's outside thigh with her hands jammed under Darcy's knee. Clint was in the unenviable position of being twined between a thigh and a calf with her perpetually icy toes somehow slipped under his shirt. 


	2. Things That Don't Surprise Darcy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint can braid and Natasha waits for him to share with someone who isn't her.

 Darcy sometimes has difficulty sleeping.  Rather than trying to force herself,  she likes to bake something delicious to surprise everyone with in the morning.  

 

It's on one of those nights that Clint staggers into the common living room looking almost green and grabs the coffee pot to drink directly from the carafe.  

 

Darcy had been popping muffins out to cool on the rack,  so she finished tidying up and then held her hand out to Clint.  She wasn't especially surprised when he grabbed it and towed her to one of the giant couches. 

 

Like Darcy,  Clint preferred to keep his hands busy when he was upset,  so she wasn't terribly surprised when he crouched on the back of the couch behind her.  He unwound her hair from the ponytail and started finger combing it.  Darcy adored having her hair played with,  so she melted into the couch and let him.  Once her hair was untangled to his satisfaction,  he began weaving it into intricate braids.  

 

"Want to talk about it, " Darcy questioned without trying to twist to face him.  For a long moment she thought he'd ignore her question but he sighed.  

 

"When Loki.... captured me,  I wasnt exactly unaware.  I wasn't in control,  and I'm working on being ok with that,  " he rushed to assure seeing her ready to jump in,  "the problem is that sometimes I dream of what it was like to be under his control and I'm afraid everything that's happened since is a dream."

 

"You know the episode of Sherlock where he almost dies and we start getting to see into his mind palace?" At Darcy`s nod he continued slowly winding her hair and explained,  "It was kind of like that.  I was distantly aware of what my body was doing,  like a tv that's on but doesn't have your full attention.  It was like being in a video game where my consciousness was my character, and he used places that were familiar to me to house it.  So there were times I forgot that I was trapped in my own head,  almost like dreaming.  The only way I could tell was that things had a sort of blue tint,  or the details weren't quite right or the scene would shift and I couldn't remember how I'd gone from one place to the next.  So now sometimes,  when I wake up,  I worry I'm still trapped in my head and it's been so long that I've given up on trying to fight it. " 

 

Darcy`s heart was breaking at the horror in Clint's tone, but he seemed relieved now that he'd explained the problem.  Since there wasn't much she could think to say,  she reached back and gave a wrist within her reach a gentle squeeze.  Having apparently finished with her hair,  Clint re-secured it with her hair band and slid down to sit beside her.  

 

Clint's ministrations to her hair had finally relaxed Darcy enough to make her sleepy,  so she slid down until she could tuck her head into Clint's chest and wrap her arms around him.  Clint seemed to gradually be stilling himself into his sniper mode to wait out the rest of the night,  and while she knew from experience that he wouldn't be going back to sleep,  he also wouldn't mind the company.  

 

Just as Darcy was on the edge of sleep,  she felt gentle hands easing her down to lay across the couch with her head beside Clint instead of on top of him. A warm body slid in behind her tucking against her back like spoons in a drawer (if spoons had the power to kill a man with their deceptively curvy thighs and a penchant for weaponized electricity). 

 

In the morning she was not surprised to be awoken by Natasha rising from her place behind Darcy, stretching,  and wandering off to start the coffee.  

 


	3. Game Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when spysassin skills are aimed at children's games?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **UPDATED on 9/26/18: edited for grammer and clarity. Sorry y`all! When I went back and read this chapter I realized I had a few pretty rough spots! Hopefully it's more readable now.

          Game night had been Darcy's idea. She enjoyed spending time with all of the Avengers, but Clint and Natasha had a special place in her heart. All of the Avengers attended movie night, but game night was a super secret addition to the calendar for just the three of them. Somehow, neither Natasha nor Clint were especially familiar with most games, so Darcy set out to educate them. They had already played plenty of Monopoly with fellow Shield operatives as it was a favorite for stake outs and honing sneaky spy slight of hand for cheating. 

 

          Clint surprisingly loved Scrabble. His penchant for seeing the big picture made him a master of word placement strategy. Natasha on the other hand enjoyed sending a message with her choices. Sometimes she came up with creative insults. Other times she tried to come up with new pet names and had them guess to which of them she was referring. Sometimes they would compete to see who could make Darcy progress from giggles to snorting with the dirtiest words. 

 

          Uno went about like Monopoly. Correction, Uno was probably worse than Monopoly. In penance, Clint and Natasha treated Darcy to a game of strip Twister. Since there were some obvious advantages, handicaps were picked. Whoever won had to do an increasing number of shots from a bottle of nearly lethal Russian vodka that Nat favored. As always, the rules were not firm, if any of the participants reached a point that they were uncomfortable stripping or drinking, they could choose to pass and sit out a game instead. The shots progressed with the number of games, for example, the winner did one shot for the first game, three for the third game of the night, and so on. Natasha won the first four games of the night. However, after ten shots around people she was comfortable with in short succession, she started grinning more widely and her voice slid into a slight Russian accent. She was also definitely slipping her hands about more than she had in the beginning. To start with, each of her moves around the board had been precise, graceful, and economical. Now, she occasionally gave a clumsy caress to an ankle or a wrist on her way to her own colored dot. 

 

          Jarvis, good bro that he was was randomly generating color/body parts for them so no one had to be the spinner. Jarvis was in on their super secret game nights and even joined them for some games. He was the reigning champion of chess. 

 

          It was at the fifth game that Clint had his coup! He was left in his boxers and socks while Darcy was down to undergarments, leggings, and 2 layers of tops. She tended to bundle a lot more than the assassins so she had a bit of an advantage on stripping games. However, soon Nat and Clint were both struggling and battling it out shakily for the next few games. By the time everyone was down to their underwear Natasha and Clint had started to get wobbly. That game night ended when Darcy gracefully, and intelligently, declined to do the 16 shots that were her due as champion of the 16th round. They all decided that was probably enough for one night. 

 

          If Natasha was Queen of Twister, then Clint was the reigning champ of Mad Libs. He said it came from his experience with lip reading. He normally turned his hearing aids off and watched the girls read theirs so he wouldn't be distracted by the slightly off pronounciation. 

 

          Simpler board games like Trouble, Shoots and Ladders, and Candyland were saved for when one of the three was having a rough week and wanted something semi-brainless to play. They would turn up music and go through the motions. These nights were often accompanied by copious amounts of junk food and hot beverages instead of alcohol and stripping. 

 

           


	4. Step Into My Web Said the Spider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More fluffy goodness! A longer chapter as a thank you to all the readers who have been sticking with me despite slow updates!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm not even attempting to address canon or timelines for the purposes of this fluffy little thing. Hope y'all can forgive me!

          When Steve showed up with his old pal Bucky, Clint and Darcy both noticed the way Natasha seemed to withdraw into herself. They had several Netflix marathons and game nights playing all of Natasha's favorites. Eventually whatever she seemed to be struggling with was settled however she needed it to be and Darcy was free to turn her attention outwards again. 

      She had intentionally read only what was required of her to read on Barnes, leaving as much of his file unknown as she could. What she had read had made her heart ache for the man. She had a hard time understanding the wariness of some of her housemates, the same way she struggled with the way they treated Clint sometimes but especially Natasha. For the people with supposedly superior moral compasses, some of her fellow Tower residents could be incredibly intolerant of other people's beliefs and principles. That said, the person who seemed to be the hardest on Barnes was Barnes himself. His formidable composure didn't allow him something as obvious as a flinch, but he clearly removed himself from the presence of anyone he thought the Soldier could damage. He was constantly monitoring himself with an almost frantic level of attention. 

          Darcy was apparently one of the people he considered breakable, she knew because she was only ever fleetingly in his presence. That changed in the middle of the night one month approaching Thanksgiving. Darcy had quietly slipped out of the common room she had crashed in with Clint and Nat in search of the team kitchen where she would be less likely to wake anyone with middle of the night baking. Despite her best efforts, Barnes popped out of the shadows when she was in the middle of pouring warmly spiced filling into several pie crusts. His super hearing must have rivaled even Steve's since Tony had soundproofed the kitchen to a ridiculous level. (Don't even ask about the incident with the toaster that led to the need for the soundproofing.)

"Evening," she acknowledged him warmly but kept her focus on her pies. His eyebrows furrowed a bit but he nodded back before punching a few buttons on Tony's ridiculous monstrosity of a size Queen coffee machine. Something that smelled strong and as spiced as her pies was dispensed. Expecting him to take his coffee as an excuse for wandering in to check the security of the common space and leave, Darcy took a quick glance behind her when no dark, silent presence slipped back out through the doorway. Bucky was leaning against the counter behind her and watching her work. She turned back around quickly and tried to keep her giggles imperceptible at the fact that she had just noticed the striped circles with centered star pattern on his pajama bottoms. She enjoyed the quiet company, and somehow Bucky timed his coffee sipping so that he slipped out of the kitchen just a few minutes before Darcy wandered back to her cuddle pile. 

The next morning, she was missing a pie by her count, but since she had baked quite a few she shrugged it off. Over the next several months, she noticed the third spysassin in the Tower more frequently. He always seemed to show up at her midnight bakes when she slipped away from her favorite twins. She also caught his eyes sliding away from her when she left the room to check on Clint or Natasha after missions. He seemed especially intrigued and intense when he watched her in their group settings.

Clint wasn't as excluded by the team as Natasha. He had a less blank poker face and his silly, joking persona was disarming. However, he often sat on whatever furniture she sat on for team bonding nights. Given that most of the extremely tactile (she wasn't touching all the childhood issues there-pun intended) Avengers Team typically found excuses to puppy pile around one piece of furniture, Natasha's couches always had a depressing amount of room to share. Natasha and Clint were typically subtle in their touching of each other around the team. They would just happen to settle with a foot touching a thigh with barely perceptible pressure, or a swollen limb propped over the other's lap. Darcy, perceived as a warm, tactile person herself, could and did get away with far more without raising too many eyebrows after the initial shock. So as not to out Nat and Clint with things they didn't want shared, she tried to stick to less verbal ways of checking if she had their permission to snuggle. She would discuss something with another of the Team across the room while distractedly wandering towards Nat's and Clint's couch. She started further from them and ambled closer by slow steps. She would get a small head tilt when she was at a distance they preferred. 

The preferred distance depended on the kind of day both of them were having. If they had been idle too long, experiencing a dearth of missions, sometimes their demons crept up on them. Too many cold hand washings left knuckles more chapped than usual, and they perhaps felt they didn't deserve the simple friendship and loyalty she offered. On those days they all suffered her presence in touching distance but not touching on the couch. 

Some days a mission had gone sideways in an unexpected way and they needed the security of unencumbered access to their weapons. In that case, they sat with their favored draw hand on the outside and Darcy between them, cuddling for reassurance and reassuringly sandwiched in a way that pacified their protective instincts. Some days they were just Nat and Clint, and they were content to pretend they were ordinary. Nat and Darcy might draw cat calls from Stark on those days for spooning with their heads in Clint's lap. Or Thor might eyeball Clint threateningly for snuggling Darcy close in his lap with Natasha twined around and behind them like a feline octopus. Darcy never let on that she knew they felt a smidgen more secure those days because they had snuck in to creatively stash weapons in easy reach in the couch cushions earlier in the day. 

Darcy, of course, never caught Bucky overtly staring. She did, however, notice the stone faced looks he and Natasha exchanged and inferred from her experience with Nat that he was watching them a little too closely for her comfort. Even though they weren't exactly friends, they weren't exactly not friends either. Darcy baked through the basics of her repertoire slowly over the course of several months. She carefully noticed the percentage of her batches that disappeared. The only treat that disappeared in double the usual quantity was her Auntie's recipe for plum cake. She started leaving it out as a gift on a side table near Bucky's room when she noticed he was having a tough week at therapy. He wasn't especially obvious about it, but after having learned to read Natasha's subtle cues, his were easier to pick up on. He still didn't talk beyond small talk to her, or seek her out often. 

Bucky's tells were subtle. A barely flashed glint of wistfulness when he watched her interactions with Natasha and Clint. A "bad moment" just inside of Steve's eye sight when he was berating Natasha after a mission and it was upsetting Darcy. In these moments Natasha looked a bit like a fox with its leg in a trap, feral and angry and not sure if it could trust any kindness and tempted to gnaw its own damn leg off spitefully for freedom. He never left the range or watched Clint more than he watched anyone else when Clint came in to shoot. Darcy noticed the difference in treatment and appreciated it. Clint seemed to appreciate it and return the favor. Darcy was happy they could find some understanding in one another, since their experiences were hopefully beyond what most could ken. 

The moment that would pull Bucky inexorably into their small group wouldn't happen until Natasha and Clint were away on a joint mission. 


End file.
